DOE reviewing Test Site contract bids

Thursday, Aug. 11, 2005 | 11:18 a.m.

The Energy Department is still reviewing bids for a contract that expires Sept. 30 to manage and operate the Nevada Test Site, an official said Wednesday.

Early this year 16 companies expressed an interest in landing the five-year contract worth roughly $3 billion, said Darwin Morgan, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Agency.

The Energy Department was still reviewing the offers on Wednesday, he said.

The Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is important to national security, especially for ensuring the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile through experiments on weapons components, Morgan said.

The site's chief mission is remaining ready to resume underground nuclear weapons testing if the president orders renewed nuclear experiments, Morgan said.

There are no plans by the Bush administration for renewing nuclear tests, stopped in September 1992 by the president's father.

In the past year the Test Site received the Atlas Pulsed Power generator from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The 650-ton Atlas generator will help the U.S. certify the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile.

The Test Site also trains emergency responders, conducts environmental management and restoration of contaminated sites and buries low-level radioactive waste.

Bechtel Nevada assumed managing and operating the Test Site in 1995. Its original five-year contract was scheduled to expire on Dec. 31, 2000, but the Energy Department exercised an option to extend the contract through Sept. 30, 2005.

Bechtel Nevada is a consortium of Bechtel Nevada Corp., Johnson Controls Nevada and Lockheed Martin Nevada Technologies.

The successful bidder will manage an annual budget of roughly $300 million with around 3,000 employees.

Among the companies bidding is Bechtel. Other bidders include a subsidiary of Halliburton called Kellogg, Brown and Root Services Inc., which has military contracts in Iraq. Vice President Cheney once served as Halliburton chairman and has drawn criticism from political opponents who say the company benefitted from an Iraq invasion that he advocated.

Kellogg was involved in putting out oil well fires after the Gulf War. Two years ago, Kellogg raised the ire of several Congressional Democrats who alleged the firm was over-charging the government for services in Iraq, which a Pentagon audit confirmed. The company said it had acted within its contractual obligations and delivered services at a reasonable cost given a war-time environment.

An NNSA spokeswoman in Washington this morning said she could not offer more details about the bid process and referred calls to Morgan. A Bechtel spokesman was unavailable for comment this morning.

The 16 companies that expressed interest in bidding on the Test Site contract are BWX Technologies, Inc.; Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc.; Washington Group International; Lockheed Martin Information & Technology Services; Kellogg, Brown & Root Services Inc.; Bechtel National Inc.; Computer Sciences Corp.; Parsons Infrastructure and Technology Group; Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure Inc.; Fluor Government Group; MELE Associates Inc.; Tetra Tech FW Inc.; Weston Solutions, Inc.; Technical Business Services; AECOM Government Services Inc.; and Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas Inc.

Morgan said he could not comment on how many companies remained in the running for the Test Site contract.